Geneva aldermen have given the nod to a Texas-based business that wants to outfit the city with wireless fidelity.

MeshLinx Wireless’ current business plan calls for the offering of a lower speed free WiFi service as well as several fee based, higher speed offerings, said Pete Collins, Geneva’s information technology manager, at the Aug. 13 Committee of the Whole.

Those higher speed offerings include 1.5-megabyte, 3-megabytes and 5-megabyte packages and customer subscription fees would range along the lines of $20, $30 and $35 respectively. Anything below 5 to 12 kilobytes is free.

“It will certainly be better than a dial-up connection,” said Collins.

Officials from Geneva, Batavia and St. Charles were previously in talks with the California-based MetroFi last summer about the possibility of providing WiFi for the entire area, which means someone could be anywhere in the Tri-Cities with a laptop computer and connect to the Internet for free.

However, MetroFi changed its business model and was not offering free WiFi to cities it had not contracted with already. Tri-Cities officials had opted to seek WiFi together to provide a larger market for MetroFi.

Collins said MeshLinx, based out of Richardson, Texas, is better than MetroFi because it will not run ads across the top of the Web browsers like MetroFi does.

In the contract, MeshLinx would pay Geneva for pole attachments as well as electric usage for their wireless equipment.

MeshLinx wants to come to the Tri-Cities because it is near Aurora which uses MetroFi, Collins said.

“MeshLinx wants to blanket the entire Tri-Cities area and compete with MetroFi,” he said.

The city of St. Charles already has a WiFi network around its municipal campus downtown, but it also recently approved a contract with MeshLinx. Collins said Batavia is also expected to follow suit.

Batavia City Administrator Bill McGrath said currently staff is reviewing the WiFi agreements with MeshLinx.

“I’m ready to see what comes out of staff comments. I think it’s definitely something Batavia should try and offer to the citizens and make happen for them,” he said.

Geneva could give final approval at 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 20, at City Hall, 22 S. First St.